Smoke and Mirrors
by Shadowstar
Summary: Flashfic. Snake smokes and drinks and doesn't look at himself in the mirror. As seen on LJ. Please R&R.


He still drinks sometimes. It's not to forget, because that's impossible. It's not to remember, because that doesn't work either. It's just to dull the blades of memories that come rushing at him like serrated shards of mirrors, looking at himself and himself and himself, all the distorted reflections of a million hims.

He's killed his father. He's killed his brother. Brothers and brothers, probably sisters too, cousins and nieces and nephews and uncles and aunts, all dead by his hand. Dead. Dead. Dead.

He doesn't feel happy, or sorry, or angry, though he feels he should do. The saddest part is this: He only lives when they die.

Each crack of the other him's neck pushes a memory back for a moment, replaced by another, a different face, a different _ him _looking back at him. His gunshots kill him over and over again in his dreams. He almost thinks that if he kills enough of him, he'll forget about himself. And then, he won't remember dying. Or is it living? He hasn't been sure for years.

He doesn't even look in the mirror to shave, because that face he's looking at might be someone he wants to kill, knives bright and flashing, blood spurting to cover his hands, razors into infant swords.

They don't understand him, and he likes it that way. They've asked him to talk, tried to tell him their own stories; he ignores them all. His partner stares at him sometimes, almost fearful. He thinks his partner is right to be afraid. And that scares him more than even the him that haunts his dreams and makes the whiskey taste like cigars and dull metal and fire and burning, acrid smoke.

And when the whiskey is gone, there's always the smoke choking him, dark billowing clouds rising from still screaming bodies, his own screams catching in his throat because he's screaming, and he's screaming because he's burning alive. Some nights, the darkness is overwhelmed by the angry leaping flames that lick the hollow skyline. And then the flames die too, leaving him without even stars or moon under the bright city sky, just an unending emptiness that freezes his soul. His cigarettes fill the void, but it's never quite enough to make the smell of burning flesh odorless. Bullets cut through the smoke, and lasers and light, and walking nuclear bombs.

His partner stares at him, afraid while he smokes, and he grins, and no one sees that it's all hollow, sad victories where he doesn't really win. And then there's a mission, and he kills, and the guns' blank drumming bursts arrhythmically, and the mirrors break again in crashing waves of symbols, and the harsh bursts of bombs bray like timpani in the night. And he kills himself, and he kills him and her and they don't have names. Names don't belong on the battlefields, but neither do looks of fear and hope.

It's even more painful when the look is adoration. The blonde is lost in his worship like the redhead was, like his partner before the bees dropped dead and forgotten into honey soured by fallen men. He doesn't see the danger, doesn't see that he's only another him, and another him and another. Him to infinity, to eternity, a never-ending parade of killers, and each lives only to watch himself die. And he always dies, doesn't he? Or does he live? He's still not sure.

So he drinks, and he smokes, and he lives his life as though every day is his last. His partner talks about his hopes and dreams, their futures, but he just sees _ himself _talking. He's talking and talking, telling himself his visions of the future, his mad prophecies that always turn to death and destruction and a world in endless nuclear winter, locked in heated battle to stay the delicate ice age descending.

It isn't real. His thoughts are fantasies, and he knows that they aren't him. He's been told he isn't him. Shell shock, they called it once, then post traumatic stress, and now it has some other name that sounds like latin or greek. But does it matter? He goes on and on to himself, his every thought about killing another man in a circus mirror.

He jumps when he sees himself in the knife he uses to cut the turkey for thanksgiving. His partner takes it away when he drops it, his eyes wide, his lip bleeding, saying something about understanding and taking time off. It doesn't matter. He can hear himself talking in his head, like he always has. The dark windows overwhelm him with him.

He smashes them, destroying him, and him, and him. Dead. Dead. Dead. They're all dead, and they always were dead. Dead eyes in the dulled kettle on the stove, dead hands in the sheen of his gun, dead bodies in the car. His partner had it repainted. He scratched it to find them all still waiting under the coat, dead as him.

Sometimes, his partner tries to hold him when the delusions are strongest, but he sees _ him _in his partner's glasses, cold eyes staring out where warm ones should be. He wants to rip them out, to scratch the blue eyes out. He tried once, and his partner ran, and the blonde came over, adulation dying on lips. Dying. Dying. Dead. They fought that night, like angels in a Miltonian daydream. It was what he wanted. It's what he always wants, because it's what he needs.

Sometimes, he thinks all that matters is the fight, because when he's not fighting, that's when he's dead. Or is it when he's alive? He's never been sure.

So sometimes he drinks, and the freezing whiskey burns all the way down. It's not to forget, because that would be lying and he'd never lie to himself. It's not to remember, because he can't possibly forget. It's just to dull all the thoughts that stab him when he tries to shave.


End file.
